Robbie Fowler's magic...

I should be supporting an exciting team that splashes out enormous wages for huge stars, instead I find myself supporting a bunch of duffers with two very old slow, lazy duffers up front. I think it's time to start with Thompson and McLean. Alternatively get Feeney back from the Jacks, and Green back from the Donkeys. Did someone mention Jason Byrne? Is he still here? Aaaaargh!.

At least Feeney's got a good song.

No Soul At The Ricoh Arena

Many modern stadiums have no soul, and the prime example of this is Coventry's Ricoh Arena. I used to like their old stadium at Highfield Road, but their new plastic stadium several miles out of town next to the motorway is a horrible place. It has no atmosphere at all, and it is very hard for the crowd to generate an atmosphere, even at an eventful game like yesterday's Coventry v Cardiff 2-2 draw. The Coventry crowd only sang their traditional Eton boating song once or twice, only bothered with a half-arsed chorus of "sheepshaggers' at the Cardiff fans (must try harder), and spent most of the 90 minutes booing. Even when they were winning. They seemed to derive particular pleasure at booing our goalkeeper, Alexander, for having the temerity to put his face into their forward's boot. Very strange. The boos stopped, strangely, after Cardiff equalised (leading to Cardiff chants of "You only boo when you're winning"), but started up again when another player pulled Alexander's shirt.

Funny really: they probably had a justification to boo a couple of things: they had what looked like a decent goal disallowed, and they have a bloody hoprrible stadium and the weather was crap - but their boos were pretty random. Although, to be fair, they did result in Loovens getting booked for sod all in the first half, as famously useless ref Graham Poll booked him under pressure from all the boos, and this ended up with Loovens getting sent off for a second, justified, yellow card, which removed our ability to defend, and meant the game was a draw, rather than the unlikely win Cardiff seemed to have stolen after Whittingham's great second half shot into the top corner of the net.

But it's a horrible stadium. And 16 year old pom pom girls don't improve the view at half time. As you can see from the photos here. Ah well, another fun day out with Cardiff City. Next its a trip to the Emirates to see the youth team lose to Arsenal's under 18s, a week Monday.

FA Cup Fever

On Sunday City are going to have the fun of playing Spurs in the FA Cup 3rd Round. Bizarrely some City fans are excited by this. Others less so - I have decided not to go to the game but to take the easy 'Sky' option. The question is would I have done this a few years ago? Certainly I went down to Ninian Park for the Leeds game (if you need to be told about this suffice it to say - we were in the third division, they were top of the premiership, we won, and there wasn't a "riot" whatever the press say), so I guess being in Division 2 (in old money) or "the Championship" has made me a bit blasé. But also we lost to Spurs in the league cup only a couple of years ago, and last year's big trip to Arsenal was so much more exciting. (Me and my old man 'took' the North Bank). Anyway, it also seem less exciting when you're watching a team that has slipped up so badly recently and you start to believe every game will be a 0-0 draw. We haven't won in weeks, nor even scored. Our players are tired and injured, Jones seems to have no idea how to get some of them playing again. Chopra is doing a fine impersonation of Andy Campbell, and the only hope for a draw is 0-0. However, I doubt that we'll be able to hold off Spurs, and we'll be very lucky to come away with 0-2. Now the problem is getting a babysitter for J while K and I go down the pub to see the game.

Short ugly old left back

So the last chance to sign someone on loan passes with us signing Alan Wright on loan from Sheffield United. He used to be ok when he played for Villa, but that was a few years ago. He's 35 now, and has certainly stopped growing: at 5 foot 5" he is, I am unreliably informed, the smallest player in the league. Well, he might be ok. We'll see.

The sad thing about the photo is that I got it from uglyfootballers.co.uk. So there you have it: short of players, so we borrow a short ugly old left back from Sheffield United. It's a wonder I'm not over-excited, isn't it.

By the way, I gather a cricket match has started in Australia that some people seem to care about it. Bizarrely K was listening to it on the radio in the night when she couldn't sleep. Kept me awake for HOURS, even though I was snoring, I am told.

Nothing much

It's been a funny first half of week. At the weekend both kids were in Belgium which is kind of strange, as they were there for different reasons. J was with her dad, M went with his school to see the 1st world war battlefields. Of course he managed to drink some belgian beer and brought back some welcomely received Belgian chocolate. Monday K & J were both ill: headaches, throwing up and all the fun that goes with that. J was back to school yesterday (kids bounce back so fast) but K's been off all week so far. Kind of strange for me, while I'm working at home. But at least I have been working - various bits and pieces: preparing for training I'm running next week, helping someone with a grievance and writing bids for work that starts in January. It would be good to get it, financially, but you can't rely on things like this, so also preparing other bids, and organising for other work I have coming up. Also putting new bits on the toosh website about the kind of things toosh can do. More interesting I think, and more likely to get the punters in: I need to do more marketting but am wary of emailing potential clients too often: I may circulate leaflets in the new year.

As for Cardiff City, will they bounce back from last Friday's dreadful QPR game? I'm going up to Sheffield to get dru... sorry, I mean to find out. I do hope we get one or two more players in soon: our squad is looking paper thin. Again, last week's game showed that we need everyone playing, everyone on form. Let's hope we get there against the owls. Good nickname. J thought I was making up their real name "Sheffield Wednesday? WEDNESDAY??!! You mean United, don't be silly". A 9 year old expert: WTFDIK? Hey, this post needs a picture. Ah, that'll do. (Don't ask why).

Oops! Cardiff slip up against QPR

Well, last night's defeat to the hoops was a piss off. K and I went to the Quays in Holloway Road to watch, and they put it on for us on a big screen in the corner: there are different screens all over the pub. The other screens were either showing Gaelic Football or Irish musicians. Meanwhile behind us a couple of couples were rowing rather rowdily. Not enough for me to take my eyes off the football, you understand, but rowdily all the same. As for the game lots of people have been slagging off Ledley: Interestng. I don't think Ledley's been much cop for a while: I actually thought he was better last night than in other games I've seen, Scimeca's passing seemed to have gone astray, Parry was anonymous, and our front two looked the worst I've seen them. Thompson was no surprise given he was returning from an injury, but Chopra's performance was by a long stretch the worst I've seen him play. Gunter's performance for a 17 year old's first game was very good (he'll improve), McNaughton looked good in the 2nd half (apart from the goal). Still, we were the better side by a mile in the second half and were unlucky to lose to a breakway goal a couple of minutes from the end.

Apart from the rowing we were entertained by a simultaneous disco for the last 20 minutes of the game. We watched the game while the DJ played "Going back to Africa" by Toto for a couple of South Africans, and the drummer of the band on later drummed along badly to the song. We were glad we weren't going to stay for the band. I've got more rhythm than that drummer.

We need to be better to have any chance of staying up near the top, though. Luckily Birmingham failed to beat Wolves and Preston only won 1-0 at Leicester so we're still top on goal difference. We miss Gilbert, I should add, for his battling qualities and forward movement.

We didn't stay at the Quays. It's a big modern friendly Irish pub with a widely varied clientele. Apart from the rowing young couples, we saw older couples dressed up to eat, a couple of asian ladies drinking tea, old Irish men at the bar supping on pints of Guinness, a woman on her own drinking a cup of coffee, various other young people come for the band... It's an amazing job to pull that many and so varied a group of people in, and I guess it helps that the bar staff are so friendly. Shame they couldn't organise the right result.